Character Analysis of Madam Bovary

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Character Analysis of Madam Bovary

Richard Brooks

English 6

Essay # 4Order custom research paper on Character Analysis of Madam Bovary

July 10th 00

Madame Bovary, written by Gustave Flaubert was considered very controversial when it was first published. The novel was actually tried in a court of justice for obscenity, because it was alleged to be concerned with adultery and contains situations and allusions that shocked the prudish philistine government of Napoleon III. It was cited for offenses against morality and religion. Fortunately, Flaubert won his case and Madame Bovary remains to this day one of the masterpieces of French and world literature. It still holds up fairly well today. The psychological descriptions are so well depicted that they transport the readers to the characters most inner psyche. An analysis can be made of the two most important roles composing this novel Emma and Charles.

Emma Bovary

One may say that Emma Bovary is one of the most interesting women characters of world literature. One of the major challenges of Madame Bovary is to figure out what leads to her self-destruction. She does not cherish what she possesses, but laments what happiness her world does not give her. Hers is a story of spiritual emptiness and foolish idealism. ...Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words bliss, passion, ecstasy, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. She searches for what is found in the fantasy world of books in her own world and falls short of her expectations. Charles, her husband, she takes for granted, as She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.

Growing up on an isolated farm with few friends, Emma began life as a lonely child. Then, upon entering the Catholic convent school, she was completely shut off from the external world and turned inward for excitement. During this time, she read dozens of romance novels and formed an image of the perfect lover, who would be strong, handsome, athletic, and artistic. Despite her fantasies of this ideal lover, Emma would be happy only in her dreams. Her pleasure lay in the dreaming, not in the reality of having a lover. Maybe one of Flauberts reasons for creating Emma Bovary is to show the wreckage that such dreams can bring when the person tries to impose these dreams on reality. When a character like Emma despises the life around her and tries to live her life as she fantasizes it should be, the process can destroy both her and her family. At the end of the novel, not only do Emma and Charles die, but their daughter is condemned to a life in the factories.

Some say that, in Emma, Flaubert is allegorizing his own disappointments from life. From his biography one can learn that he was frustrated with society, and maybe he had had it with how narrow-minded people were. In Madame Bovary, Emma is portrayed as extrordinarily selfish, greedy, and foolishly romantic. Flaubert had to have known how ridiculous and ignorant Emma acted in the novel, but perhaps his own feelings mirrored her childish portrayal. In other words, Flaubert had the same feelings but he was aware of their immaturity. This was his only outlet to express his feelings. So, in his sometimes-immature attitude and portrayal of Emma, he was mirroring his own inner demons.

Emma has never been really honest with herself. She knows she was being untruthful and adulterous to her husband, but she never acknowledges or understands that she is dishonest with herself. Emma never holds an inner dialog or indulges in any self-reflection other than that of thinking of ways to satisfy her passionate longings. Emma never acknowledges her lack of maternal feelings for her daughter, Berthe. Berthe is only a non-significant character in Emmas life. She very seldom even thought of the child. Emma never acknowledges what she is doing and stops to consider the consequences of her actions when she keeps borrowing money from Monsieur Lheureux, the proprietor of the local dry-goods store.

The tragedy of her actions is that Emma, if she had had any self-reflection, if she had once tried to think things out, if she had once tried to really communicate with her husband on a level other than just despise and get frustrated by his unperceptive personality, if she had ever been honest with herself or had conceded that her whole life was based on pleasing herself and abusing everyone else in her life, if she had just once, thought of anyone other than herself. Emma would have had a chance at redemption, a chance to mature, a chance to become the wife that Charles thought he had married.

Charles Bovary

Charles is portrayed as a dull country doctor, who is vulgar, primitive, and almost entirely without passion. At the beginning of the novel, Charles is a schoolboy too timid to assert himself. Its only with the greatest effort that hes able to pass his medical college exams. After graduation, his mother secures a job for him in Tostes, then arranges his marriage. He has no idea what he wants to do in his life and would just have his mother make all his decisions for him. His marriage enables him to cut loose from his mother, and everything that happens to Charles from this point on results from his decision to marry Emma. Soon after their marriage, Emma sees him as a burden. However, Charles is a faithful, loving, and forgiving man whose devotion to Emma is a sign of strength. His honesty and hard work also stand out among the number of unscrupulous characters that people Yonville.

Charles is a product of the way he was raised. He saw the way his father mistreated and ignored his mother and wanted something better for his wife. Maybe he believes that the way to do this is to bend to her every whim when she asks, which proved to be his downfall. His love for Emma, and the desire to make her happy blind Charles. All he wants after his first marriage is the chance to be happy and to lead a normal life with the woman he loves. The only way he could do this is to do anything he could to appease her. He assumes that he can trust the woman he married, which unfortunately gives her the power to ruin him financially and which brings about the end where they enter the situation that kills both of them respectively.

Charles relationship with Emma is truly a tragedy. Charles loves Emma so completely that he is completely blinded to her faults and to the fact that she is totally dissatisfied with him as a man, a husband, and a lover. Charles is infatuated with Emma and, in typical bourgeois style, sees her as a possession. But he has no curiosity about whats going on beneath the surface, what shes thinking and feeling, and whether shes truly happy. Its true that Charles is a loving and devoting husband, but Emma never understands the depth of his devotion, the purity of his feelings for her, or the pleasure that just the sight of her brought him. Not until Emma lies dying does she realize what a treasure she has neglected to mine in Charless love. One can tell so from the passage below

God! she cried. Its horrible! He [Charles] flung himself on his knees beside her bed. Speak to me! What did you eat? Answer, for heavens sake! And in his eyes she read a love such as she had never known. What a tragedy and an irony! Her approaching death gave Emma a clarity of mind she has never had, and Charless love is suddenly evident to her at a time when she can no longer react to it. At long last, Emma realizes that she has been looking for love in all the wrong places.

Leon Dupuis/ Roldolphe Boulanger

Leon, a law clerk in a notarys office, meets Emma on her first night in Yonville. He is certainly physically superior to Charles, with ideas that are somewhat fresher. Drawn together by their common interest in music, art, and fashion, he and Emma fall in love. Though Leon is too passive and inexperienced to seduce her physically- and Emma isnt ready for an affair- he does seduce her intellectually and lays the groundwork for their future involvement.

Three years later, when they meet again at the Rouen opera house, Leon has gained experience with the world and women. They begin to meet once a week in a hotel room at Rouen. Soon after their affair begins, however, Leon seems overpowered by Emma. Its as if their roles have been reversed, with Leon becoming Emmas mistress. Ultimately, she is too much for him. Besides, having an affair with a married woman conflicts with his essentially middle-class values.

The characters Leon Dupuis and Rodolphe Boulanger share similar attributes as well as contrasting ones. The similarity and contrasting characteristics of their personalities are illustrated through their actions, words, as well as by the remarks made by the other characters in the novel concerning them. Leon and Rodolphe are both admired by their peers, and they are both lovers of Madame Bovary, however, the resemblance ends there. Leon's personality is the exact opposite of Rodolphe's. Leon is humble, unassertive, and compassionate, while Rodolphe is haughty, unrelenting, and obdurate. Leon's modesty, shyness, and kindness are depicted through Flaubert's description of him. [Leon] was shy by nature, with the sort of reserve made up of both modesty and dissimulation. Flaubert also makes it evident that Leon is well liked and admired by others. In Yonville, it was found that he had very elegant manners, Monsieur Homais valued him for his education, and Madame Homais was fond of him for his friendliness since he often took the children to the garden. Leon is also very timid and has difficulty expressing his feelings towards Emma.

Leon tortured himself to discover how he could declare his feelings to her. Leon, between the fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that he imagined almost impossible, did not know how to proceed. Rodolphe, in contrast to Leon, is bold, ruthless, cunning, and devious. Rodolphe is hardhearted and extremely intelligent. He is also a very experienced man; he had spent a lot of time in female company, and was very knowledgeable about women. He is so intent on making Emma his that [he'll] be bled, if [he has] to. Rodolphe uses various ploys to try and woo Emma. He attempts to manipulate her by spewing forth-sweet lies and portraying to be a pathetic, miserable man in order to gain her affections. Rodolphe claims that he arose and came [to Emma's house] every night and little did she guess what was there, so near and yet so far, a poor miserable Leon's love for Madame Bovary is actually genuine, unlike Rodolphe's. Emma continually rose in his heart, detaching herself from it in the magnificent manner of a goddess soaring to heaven.

Leon expresses to Emma how his mind is always thinking of her and the countless times he had visited her home. Leon recalls every single minute detail concerning Emma, the clothes she wore, and the furniture in her room. He exclaims that he had loved her at first sight and he was in despair when he realized the happiness he would have had if, by the grace of fate, they had met earlier and been indissolubly bound to each other. Unlike Leon, Rodolphe's love for Emma is purely feigned. Emma is simply another mistress to Rodolphe, a passing fancy. He has no feelings for Emma at all and When he was sure of being loved, he stopped trying to please her, and his ways changed imperceptibly. He no longer used words so sweet that they made her cry nor were his caresses so ardent that they drove her mad.

Rodolphe soon became disinterested in Emma, and she resembled all his old mistresses, and the charm of novelty, falling away little by little like articles of clothing, revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion. In this manner, Leon and Rodolphe are -depicted as two characters with similar and contrasting qualities. The juxtaposition of their differing personalities aid in adding distinction and emphasizing their personalities. In juxtaposing Rodolphe to Leon, Rodolphe's true character can be seen. He is a manipulating, lying, duplicitous individual, while in contrast, Leon is a kindhearted, sincere, meek individual. Their contrasting and yet similar attributes accentuate the other character's disposition.

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